Sunday, July 23, 2017

No love for the stability-ball sitters huh? Tryna to work on their posture and core strength as they analyze the shit out of some hardcore customer data. Blastin those key demos, thrilling that high-value client, gunnin for that promotion, turbochargin that LinkedIn profile, snatching that bonus and splurging on those ankle weights like a salesforce superstar.

Bam bam bam – This go-getter gets after it!

But every time you walk by his cubicle, you're hatin. Knee-jerk response like, "Why's that dick always showing off how fit he is? Rubbing it in all our faces like 'I'm so health-conscious. Look at me on my bouncy ball seat, sculpting my abs. You should touch them. Touch my abs. Come on. Touch 'em. Just put a knuckle in the gap.' Nagging management for a stand-up desk, standing in the elevator giving you a heads up about the bullshit bureaucracy forcing employees to submit a doctor's note stating why one needs to stand at work to benefit one's health – as if that's gonna make me relate to him." It's just gonna make us feel guilty for eating a bagel in our swivel chairs and never changing our homepage from MSN.com.Oh god, we're insecure. Why do we have to take it so personally? Why is an indictment of our lifestyle and behavioral choices. I say we let brodude middle manager do his thing and move on. Unless he's throwing it in your face. Talking about his macros, judging your meals indirectly – you know, not straight up saying, "Your leftover mac and cheese is disgusting, you fatty fatty fat fat" but describing why he "could never eat that, oh, but you enjoy it!" – bouncing round the open floor plan on his stability ball, doing push ups on your cubicle wall, mixing up a protein shake while asking you for a sales report by EOD.

this makes us mad. grrr.

Desk life: Damn.

Sitting. For hours.

Eating. At our desks.

Sitting. In our cars.

Eating. In our cars.

Sitting. On the couch.

Eating. On the couch.

Spice things up a bit with that Swiss ball.

Stability - Ranges from 1/5 to 5/5 depending on sitter's core strength. Average of 3/5

Cool Factor - 1/5 No.

Difficulty - 3/5 No back support. Wow.

Perilousness - 4/5 One moment of postural imbalance and your crashing into the cubicle wall behind you, destroying your neighbors' dual monitors, spilling coffee on her iPhone and and keyboard, messing up her Pandora playlist

Added bonus - 3/5 You will make your insecure coworkers secretly hate you while combating sciatica.

Overall rating - 14/25 for that exquisite posture. We're jealous of how other people sit.

Friday, July 14, 2017

Each night around 7 pm, a pack of dudes converge on your teeny family-friendly Y, swarming the dumbbell chamber, leaking into the leg press zone, reclining on unused pieces of equipment, somehow absorbing other dudes – even the seemingly quiet ones – through meathead phagocytosis (they all know each other!), their mass expanding, filling the small room with macho sloganeering and Drake songs that blare from tinny Bluetooth speakers, irrevocably altering the environment and alienating all uncertain exercisers thinking about overcoming their free-weight anxiety.And there's always some guy lounging on the chest fly machine. Just sitting there. Sweating. You want to do some flyes, but he never leaves! Is it the same guy? A different guy? An older guy? A younger guy? You don't know. You can't tell them apart. A few piles of chopped chicken breast, unseasoned, in stringy tank tops dripping all over the vinyl cushions between their bench press sets. Do their swamp ass stains ever really evaporate? you wonder.How did weightlifting culture get so brazen? So annoying? So hyper 'macho'?Marketing, probably. Corporations branding a fucking subculture and supplying endless accessories for participating in and demonstrating that you participate in that subculture. But, bro, weightlifting is no longer a subculture. It is culture. Bodybuilding.com is the 298th most-visited website in the United States.Until Arnold sat on a weight bench engorging his bis to achieve the orgasmic pump he talks about in Pumping Iron, bodybuilding certainly qualified as a subculture. Buncha weirdos in dungeons raising chunks of metal and tugging squeaky cables. Pumping Iron changed the game, inspiring men to inflate those pecs, to swell those tris, to load up those delts, to expand those lats, to screw the legs, to fuck the squats, to achieve that big beefy symmetrical upper body. To get that sacred sexy manly V from shoulders to waist.Companies target insecurity and offer corrective experiences: Powder drink mixes named Xplode and Shotgun. Tapered black t-shirts with sarcastic slogans in bold white lettering. The perfect lifting shoes. New and exciting ways to consume Protein. PROTEIN. PROTEIN. Maybe you don't need all that. Maybe you just need a pair of sneakers, a cup of coffee, a water bottle, some weights and an adjustable bench for busting out:

Seated Arnold shoulder press (on bench with back support) 4 set of 10 reps. Rest for one minute between sets. Increase the weight for each new set. Challenge yourself.

Rest two minutes

Drop that bench flat for dumbbell bench press. 4 sets of 12 reps. Rest for one minute between sets. Increase the weight for each new set.

Rest one minute.

Raise the bench to a 60 degree incline. Lay on the bench face first. Perform lateral flyes. We're working the delts again, bad boy. 4 sets of 12 reps. Rest for one minute between sets. Increase the weight for each new set. Fight to raise those dumbbells up around ear-level. Don't let those arms flail down by your waist you like you're The Rocketeer in flight.

Boom. There ya go. Siddon 'at bench and get to work, buddy. Ya don't need all that other shit to get ripped. OK? Work hard. Eat your meat and your eggs, your soybeans or black beans if you're a vegan. Don't be obnoxious about it.

How to make sitting hard.

Pros: Get those Dwight Howard shoulders

Get healthy. Make your clothes fit better.

Gain some confidence.

Cons: But maybe you're gaining too much. Mistaking boorish egotism for poise. You think a wide back and baby head deltoids mean you're all that? Naw.

Hey twiggy legs, you're not doing any intensive training in multiple planes. You're not squatting. You're just trying to get those chest and shoulder stats up.

You don't know proper form do you?

Rotator cuffs tear every day.

Get to the gym and do your thing. Be efficient but be respectful. Sit on your little padded seat and put those dumbbells up. Rest. Repeat. Stay hydrated. Maintain your form. Ask for a spot when you need it.

Don't act like you own the place. The gym's a shared space.

Stability - 3/5 That little weightlifting seat will support you. Drive your feet into the floor and keep those heels down, though.

Cool Factor - 3/5 Musculature is a valued aesthetic quality, which may give you confidence.

Difficulty - 3/5 Don't go for 80 lb dumbbells just to compete with some stranger nearby. Do you. Increase your own strength safely.

Wednesday, July 5, 2017

happy fourthofjulyfrom a hundred-year-old, parapet-less rooftop where we're all pretty high and hammered up here holding our flaming sticks while lighting explosives in the dark watching drunk neighbors fly remote control helicopters – henceforth known as drones – at roughly eyeball level to get a better Instagram story of the professional fireworks only slightly further away.Seriously, your best bet is to sit down in case your dumbass cross-the-street neighbor's mortar gets knocked over and his smuggled bottle rockets end up firebombing your building. This way, the bombs will whizz right over your head rather than careen into your face and propel you to the pavement below like Wile E. Coyote all charred and splattered but, unlike Looney Tunes, actually dead. You're also less likely to stumble off the roof if you're seated. And your diminished surface area reduces your risk of getting pelted by wayward drones. Consider this a PSA:Sit on the cooler. Sit on a 30-rack. Sit on a blanket. Sit on a partner's lap. Sit on a lawn chair. Sit on one of 50 ancient Satellite dishes pocking the roof. But please, back away from the edge of the roof, no matter how attractive you find the single person you are talking to. You don't wanna be Dead on the Fourth of July.

Possibly dead.

OMG just use these already

Pros: It's peligroso up there - the only night drunk people light explosives without with practical impunity; a chair, blanket, cooler, lap all mitigate the risk of a deadly rooftop fallSit on the cooler. Control the coolerGet cozy with a mate.

Cons: Friend standing in front of you might obstruct your view of fireworks and throw off your Ooo and Aaah rhythmRising from a seated position prolongs your escape to the stairwell when a package of lit M80s accidentally lands next to you.Harder to swat drones.

oh jeez, sister.

Stability - 4/5 seats are stumble-proofCool Factor - 2/5 Certainly not as chill as reclining against an old brick chimney

Difficulty - 2/5 Depends what we're working with here. A lawn chair or blanket on a windy evening? Yeah gotta sit down before they blow away.

Barefoot girl sitting on the hood of a DodgeDrinking warm beer in the soft summer rain . . .

Gorgeous.

hot guy reclining on the hood of a truck: typical fictional summertime behavior

Certain imagery evokes in me a deep sense of nostalgia for activities in which I've never actually participated, but which seem quintessential to the American teen experience. Much of that imagery exists in Bruce Springsteen or Bob Seger songs, songs about idealized teenage behavior from the 1960s and early 70s – roughly 35 years before I sprouted my first pit hair.

When I hear those first few harmonica notes on 'Born to Run,' I can immediately conjure a glorious memory of myself at 17, sitting on the hood of my '97 Accord, staring up at the stars with a six-pack of Banquet beer in one hand and my girl's waist in the other.

Yeah, but that never happened.

I tried sitting on the hood of my car once. I pulled into my driveway a little before my 11:30 pm curfew on a warm, clear early-autumn night in 2004. I stood next to the driver's side door looking up at the stars and decided to heighten the emo romanticism by hopping on the hood.

It was hot – I had just shut off the engine like 30 seconds before climbing aboard – and my butt started to sweat. There were bugs biting my ankles and arms. I heard the kchunk kchunk of the hood denting every time I shifted my weight and I feared putting too much pressure on the windshield. After about a minute, unpleasantness and boredom surpassed any lingering Americana-infused sensitivity and I went inside, never to mount a hood again.

😨 🚘

I've spent a while looking for some fitting photos of idealistic teenagers atop hoods of American-made automobiles to convey my point here, but the majority of Google Image search results feature somewhat sexy white women lounging on F150s like they're in Viagra ads targeted at Nebraskan tractor-pullers. Just now, my wife glanced the photos and said it seems like I'm about to start watching porn.

This carsex phenomenon has deep roots. Seriously, the mass production of cars seems to have immediately ushered in the mass production of car-straddling pin-ups:

But let's get back to this week's SOT premise: We're all supposed to pretend it's normal to drive over to some secluded cliff or field that the local police have undoubtedly identified as a popular spot for necking and reefer-smoking to gaze at Orion's Belt and Ursa Major from the scalding hoods of our second-hand vehicles? No way. You've never done it either.

finally found what I was looking for. this photo is even more romanticized because it includes a surfboard

Pros: Star in your very own Springsteen song.

Or a Seger, a Mellencamp, a Petty, maybe even The War On Drugs.

Definitely a prominent trope in the fill-in-the-blank artist, country song template.

Warm your bum on a chilly night.

American exceptionalism.

Cons: Come on – the hood of a car is not a comfortable place to fall in love.

You might damage your car.

You risk locking your keys in the car

Or having your car stolen as you gaze up at the stars or into your lover's eyes, entranced by the power of the moment, unaware of the car thief bout to fling you into the dirt soon as he turns the key and propels the car in reverse.

Your cellphone was in the car, dumbass.

Stability - 3/5 The crumple zone can be delicate and then there goes your resale value.

Sunday, June 18, 2017

Six years ago, I lived in a foreign country and used a prepaid, push-button cell phone with a 1990s interface. It didn't have GPS – I had to figure out where I was going. It didn't have an app for translating – I had to carry a crappy dictionary around. It didn't have a touch screen – I had to tap the 1 button four times to type an á. It didn't have email – I had to note what I wanted to write later and send the email when I got home to my computer. It didn't even have a camera – I had to carry one of those around too.

I rarely texted because each message cost money – 10 centimos to send and 2 centimos to receive.

I was alone all the time, which meant I had to entertain myself by exploring the city and making art. I filled notebooks and drawing pads with some funky creations – now buried in Rubbermaid totes.

I don't really do that stuff much anymore unless I specifically add 'write' or 'draw' or 'finish project' or 'go to X' in my iCal with an alert.

I text and email all the time when I'm bored. Or I absent-mindedly scroll through sports apps to check the current National League leaders in on-base percentage for some reason.

I'm never really alone because my friends are just a WhatsApp message away, even if they're sitting next to me.

I went to a wedding yesterday and spent time during the reception watching Instagram videos that my friends took of my friends during the reception. We were all together, looking at pictures of stuff we had just done. In a way, the curated real-time social media experience exceeded the actual events because we looked handsome and carefree and we knew we'd get a lot of likes.

Before the reception, a few of us played whiffle ball in the yard at the venue and I pitched to a nine-year-old while holding my gray suit jacket in my left hand. A friend filmed us and made it his Instagram story. Watching that video, thinking how cool I looked – like I was in a J. Crew ad – and hoping everyone else would think so too, felt better than actually standing out there in the wet grass throwing to the groom's little cousin. The video delivered that little hit of superficial fulfillment.

It happened gradually these past few years, but I am now the cell phone-addicted millennial cliche I didn't expect to become. I have to hide my phone in my backpack and concentrate to zone out on the train. I watch three screens at once, rarely concentrating on just one thing at a time.

I just paused while writing this to consider checking my phone because I sent a WhatsApp message to a group thread a half hour ago and remembered that I hadn't yet received a response. Fortunately, my phone is in another room so I could more easily concentrate on Sit On Things.

crack

I was walking home from a grocery store earlier, holding a few bags that prevented me from accessing my phone, when I started thinking about "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay."

The character in Otis Redding's classic sits in the morning sun and the dock of the bay for hours, watching the water, "wastin' time." He talks about feeling listless even after making a big change (moving from Georgia to San Francisco). He is unwilling to sift through all the advice he gets and he seems reluctant to commit to meaningful personal change beyond the geographic.

I interpret the lyrics to mean that Otis' character experiences anxiety and mild depression. He thought a drastic change from a restrictive environment to a new, more dynamic setting would ignite him, but he's starting to realize that moving somewhere new – even a cool place like late-60s San Francisco – doesn't alter your thought patterns and emotions. It's just a superficial change of address unless you start working on yourself. Like all of us, this guy would benefit from seeing a therapist.

I can relate to Otis' character because I left the US (back when I had the crappy cell phone) for the same reason – I thought a drastic change of scenery would be a quick fix for deeper growth. But I was still the same person inside and I responded to people and situations the same ways I always had. Along with two stuffed suitcases, I brought the same neuroses and fears to Spain.

I definitely benefited from not having a smart phone because solitude forced me to learn directions, the metric system and a new language much faster. I had to trust myself.

I think Otis' character uses all that alone time on the dock of the bay to probe his fears and make some decisions for himself. By disconnecting, he begins to slowly overcome that inertia and, I hope, to trust himself too.

Sunday, June 11, 2017

My quick Wikipedia review of Harvey Danger's classic 'Flagpole Sitta' – a song that stands out to me as easily the best track on 1997's Now Volume 1 – initiated my deep dive into the song's origin which led me to the ancient form of asceticism known as stylitoe, Latin for "pillar-hermits."A summary:

To impress God or to look cool in front of his monastery peers or something, St. Simeon Stylites the Elder – an ancient David Blaine regarded as the preeminent pillar hermit – fasted/pretended to fast for an entire Lent in the 4th Century. Naturally, his monastery classmates considered him a freak who tried too hard to fit in so St. Simeon – oblivious to social law which dictates that anyone who goes out of their way to seem cool will, in fact, seem like a pathetic dorkus malorkus – decided to try a new neat trick: Standing for a long time.

But when plain old standing didn't work, Sim went even bigger: He chilled on top of column in the desert for 36 years.

He sat, he ate, he prayed.

But something funny happened: People began building ladders to visit him and get answers to life's big questions.

And Sim's persistence paid off. While most of monk antagonists probably died of diarrhea or the flu, Sim stayed on that pedestal. Artists started painting him, normal Romans started worshipping him and an emperor sought this dorky guru's counsel. In an early-Christian era where basically anyone could become a saint, St. Sim really distinguished himself through unwavering determination and tolerance for pain. He'd be such a sick Crossfitter.

1,600 years later, a new pillar-hermit inspired craze known as pole-sitting went viral in the U.S. Thrill-seekers climbed flagpoles and sat up there for as long as possible. Some guy in Iowa set a record by sitting on a pole for 51 days until a thunderstorm scared him.

Many historians now posit that pole-sitting influenced a generation of Instagrammable feats of endurance and patience such as Tebowing, Planking and the Mannequin Challenge.

Cool Factor - 3/5 Bitter irony: The attention you receive for sitting on a pole for an extended period of time could get you laid, but your celebrity – and, thus, your desirability – ends as soon as you leave the pole.

Difficulty - 4/5 Yeah definitely. Boring.

Perilousness - 4/5 Lightning. Angry nationalists who are like, "hey, wehre's are flag? what did ya do with are flag?"

Added bonus - 3/5 Excellent way for boring people to fake enlightenment, depth and eccentricity.

Overall rating - 18/25 Not sick, not well. So hot, in hell. Not sick, not well. Sin to live well.

Stabbed in the spine with a slender blade like all his aggro fightin peers.

Stability - it's a teeny bee. come on. sitting on that is like when a cartoon bear tries riding a tricycle, but even more challenging because bees are generally smaller than tricycles. 0/5

Cool Factor - 2/5 It's only cool if you can play it off like nothing happened. Like you're too tough to flip out from a wimpy lil bee sting. Ferdinand couldn't handle it. Not cool.

Difficulty - 5/5 It's gonna hurt

Perilousness - 5/5 If you have a severe allergic reaction to bee stings. In fact, bee sting anaphylaxis is potentially life threatening according to a cursory Google search. So if the matador doesn't kill you, the inability to breathe through your swollen trachea will.

Added bonus - 1/5 Build toughness, I guess? Develop an immunity to bee stings perhaps? But, look, the bee dies after it stings you. The stinger rips off the bee's butt and it soon dies from loneliness or blood loss. We need bees to pollenate our flowers and resist climate change. When your careless sitting kills a bee, you're worse than Monsanto.